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Taking a look at the ammo supply in my bunker, I saw I was getting a little low.

I got a nice membership to Shoot Point Blank, and I am getting there almost once a week. Makes a nice stop on my way home on Fridays.

Because I can get there once a week, I usually only shoot about 200 rounds, but week after week it adds up and the stock on hand dwindles.

There is a group I belong to on the internet where I do surveys about autos and I GET PAID FOR IT !!! WOOOOO ! A buck a survey but it does add up and I recently cashed out $50 for a Walmart gift card. I also buy all of my gasoline at Speedway and earn points that I just cashed in for a $50 Visa gift card.

So, as my supply was dwindling and I had some spare money, I went out on a buying trip. As the best of luck was with me, I also had a $10 off $50 coupon from Dick’s. Usually the Dick’s coupon is for a $100 purchase, this was indeed quite a fortuitous find for me.

A quick run about to both Dick’s and Walmart and this is what I brought home.

1827 rounds (one box of Thunderbolts had two extra).

The best part is, my out of pocket was $6. SWEEEEET !

The best value by far are the Thunderbolts at just less than 5 cents a shot, but I like having the hollow points from the 525 Golden bullets and even though the 100 round boxes of the Golden’s are closer to 8 cents a shot, I buy those once in a while just to have the containers for storage.

Aaaaaahhhh, that looks much better.

The ammo box holds about 1400 rounds, so I have about 3000 on hand.

“I’m sure glad I had just enough ammo” said no one ever after a zombie attack.

Or to quote Col. Hannibal Smith: “Overkill is highly underrated.”

Now, I was going to do a separate post on this, but it fits here.

The crazy lady known as “Mom”, is divorcing my father, and he had to clean out all of the out buildings on his property.

My dad found this ammo in his barn. I knew for a fact that I hadn’t bought any ammo that was in the barn in the past 30 years.

Just searching in the internet, I found that the bucket of Thunderbolts were from about 1993.

I had no luck with the other boxes and I even contacted the Remington historian and they could tell me no more than around 1990-1993.

I have already used up all of this old ammo and it performed rather well. There might have been 25 total rounds that failed.

“The new Model 3, crucial to the company’s success, won’t hit full-scale production until the end of June, Tesla said last week — nearly a year after the company began manufacturing the car in small numbers.”

“Throughout last year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk trumpeted a production level of 5,000 a week by December 2017. In November, he pushed that goal to the end of March 2018. Now that target won’t be hit until the end of June. The electric-car maker said in an online statement January 3 that it expects to produce 2,500 a week by the end of March.”

“Only 1,550 Model 3s were delivered in 2017’s fourth quarter. That’s on top of the 220 Model 3s the company delivered in the third quarter, for a total of just 1,770 since the first deliveries in late July.”

I am very late with posting this. The month of December found me being not very well.

The entire month of October was wet and cold and it wasn’t until the end of November when I was able to help finish closing up my brother’s outdoor pistol range.

Both sides are closed off with dirt filled in. The logs in front are about 18 inches thick and we really only shoot 9mm and 22lr so as long as were are on target, there shouldn’t be any worry about stray rounds. Also cut the ears off the tops of the telephone pole to neaten that up.

My brother just can’t stop adding things. As it was, we would have to carry out a small fold up table to put our guns and supplies on and to reload at. Here we have added what will be a small shed like building that will have a waist high shelf in the front and will put a roof on it in the spring and maybe close up the bottom third.

I think the front of the shed is 45 feet from the backstop. My brother wants to put targets up at 25-35 feet rather that directly on the backstop. Some good and bad in doing it this way. Will also get another couple of loads of the crushed blacktop and put that in all the way to the shed.

This is how it looked earlier in the summer. We finally cleaned the mess away on the left

Almost every weekend for the past two months has been wet and cold and I had not the chance to do a final mow and rake leaves.

But last week I did have have a mighty fine weekend and got almost all of the work done. I mowed the yard three times: once high, once normal and a third time low with the mulching bag on. I ended up with a great mix of fresh green clippings with dead and finely shredded leaves.

If you watched the video, you would have seen the steam coming out when I turned the pile over. I will try to turn the pile at least every other day until it freezes.

There is a crick that runs between my brother’s property and our dad’s.

They buried about 500 feet of it and we needed to build a head wall to contain high run off.

Oh, what’s a “crick?”

A crick is a small body of water between the size of a creek and a garden hose.

This crick a hundred years ago had a dam built across it to be able to hold water for making ice for the ice house on the farm.

My job for the day was just mixing the concrete. Not a difficult task at all.

We started at 8 am this is how far we got by about 10 am. My brother thought we would be done by 11. My dad had to make a run to the hardware store for more concrete so we are doing a little prep work for the right side wall.

Mini Ho in action.

My brother works for a plumbing company and has access to all sorts of really cool equipment.

ALL FINISHED !!

But, we were not finished by 11 am. This was a freak weather day for September 23rd in northern Illinois. It was 90 degrees and 80% humidity by 10 am and none of us could go past noon. So we started again the next morning at 8 am and we finished up by 10 am.

A little fine tuning with the tractor.

Almost done. Some grass seeding and it will be great.

Story.

I am fairly embarrassed to admit that I failed miserably on that Saturday of work.

By 10:30 am I literally felt like I was going to collapse from fatigue.

One of the problems was that I skipped breakfast. Another problem is that apparently I’m not 30 years old and in tremendous physical shape.

Going way back to when I was 30.

I used to work construction until I blew my back out and couldn’t do that work anymore.

The center fielder on our softball team was a couple of years older than me and I remember one game night he showed up and said, “Man am I tired.”

His job was being a buyer for a major department store so all he did all day was sit at a desk and make phone calls.

I told him this was my day:

Up at 5 am, physical labor until 3 pm, home by 4 pm,eat, go to the gym and then play two games of softball and I would be glad to play two more games every night.

Saturday at the park, AKA, my brother’s backyard. Made quite a few improvements from last year. Indoor range time in my area is about $20 an hour. If you only shot once a month or less, that’s really not too bad. But 2-3 a month, that will add up quick. Also, it is just a hell of a lot more fun to shoot outdoors. Convenience is also something that is great. I can stop by with my four loaded magazines, do some quick shooting and go.

Still looks a little “Hillbillyish” (no offense). I pay my range dues by doing most of the grounds keeping around it. Still have to finish the back and fill in the dirt behind, and have my brother figure out where he wants to move the rest of the logs to.

Just shooting at paper targets for practice.

I did about 220 rounds. I have 4 magazines that each hold 15 and always have one chambered. I shot alone this day but reloading is when all the good discussions occur.

I can stand and shoot at paper targets ALL DAY LONG, but when the training is done, it’s nice to turn the “fun factor” up up 11 and shoot things that go boom !!

I have had very inconsistent results with the baking soda and vinegar bottles we shoot at. Some are really cool and some are complete fizzling duds.

So, enter Mr. Wizard. (science reference from way back if you are of my age group).

Going backwards, earlier this year I tried something to make it easier to mix the vinegar and baking soda. If you are not quick with the bottle capping, it can be a mess. So I thought up a way to make baking soda pellets. I did not photo document that so there is little to show. I had some plastic trays to use for a mold that could make pellets that were about twice the size of a 45 shell casing. I knew that just mixing water and baking soda would result in a crumbling pellet so I had the bright idea of also adding white glue. Well crap, I had no idea that would literally make “Slime.”

I sometimes think I am a genius. But unfortunately, it’s not the Einstein type, it’s more of the Wily E. Coyote kind.

But the pellets did dry out and they work fine except it takes quite a while for the pellet to dissolve. Need to have that be quicker, so I have some other ideas to try.

The other more simple idea would be just to go to Aldis and buy a 12 pack of crappy soda to shoot at.

The first four bottles were only 1/2 full of vinegar. That was the type of reaction that I was looking for !! I was only able to find one of those bottles. I suspect that the rest blew into the cornfield.

NOTE TO SELF: Put another bucket under the middle of the plank. Tired of the first shot knocking down other targets.

The next three shots were a 50/50 mix and the bottle was full. Two of the bottles were through and throughs with jumpy, fizzy bottles. Kind of cool, but not as cool as the first four bottles.

Next four were a 25/75 vinegar/water mix and the bottles were full. 3 of the shots were the “Jumpy Fizzy” kind like the previous 4 but the third shot that jumped straight up in the air was kinds cool, still not as cool as the first exploding ones.

The rest of the aluminum beer cans were full with a 50/50 mix. Almost all of them had a good explosive result.

The results of the experiment?

I haven’t a clue.

If the beer cans weren’t as almost explosive as the first four, I would think having a half full bottle was better.

The good news is that I will get more bottles and blow more stuff up !!!!!

Just wanted to take a little look at the shot placement on the bottles.

Only had one of the first bottles and it went at about the middle of the vinegar level. Interesting that the round went out the back, but there was damage to the bottom of the bottle.

The number twos had good solid hits. Can see the two that were jumpy & fizzy.

The number threes were all low shots. The bottle with the damage on the bottom must have been the one that went sky high up.

Always have to clean up at the end of the day. My dad’s property is next door and he doesn’t like seeing any messes or having any of the debris blow around. My brother’s place already has too many hillbilly piles of “stuff” around. He’s a hard worker and very industrious so I can’t give him any crap about that.

I even clean up the brass on the range. Brass laying around is kind of cool and adds to the ambiance, but I pick it up to take to the scrapyard. Get a few bucks back to buy more ammo !! The .22 casings have almost no weight, so it takes a long time to accumulate.

Done shooting the bottles and now going to use my last magazine to try some quick double shots.

I’m going from a low ready and shooting.

Bottom 3 inch target:

OK, that ain’t too bad for quick shooting !! I’d like to say that I am just a freaking bad ass spot on shooter, but really, I think a lot of that was luck.